Thursday, 8 May 2014

Late last month, a scheduled trip
to New York
happened to coincide with The Tribeca Film Festival. When I discovered this a
couple of weeks before crossing the Atlantic, I immediately looked into the
possibility of going to see some films and was fortunate to find the time to
squeeze three in. With only six days in the greatest city on the planet, I
wouldn’t have been able to justify any more than this. Tribeca was my first
film festival and overall I had a positive experience. The event was well run
by knowledgeable and enthusiastic staff while the locations were excellent. The
cinemas themselves were less desirable however. The three screenings we went to
were situated in two theatres, both multiplexes and both with very shallow
seating rakes. At 6’ 3” I still struggled to see through the heads of those in
front of me and was very conscious of the views I was obstructing behind. I’m
not sure if this is consistent with all American cinemas but on the only other
occasion that I’ve seen a film in the States, in the same city, a year before,
there was no issue. Anyway, I digress.

The first film we saw was Night
Moves at the AMC Loews Village 7 on 3rd Avenue. Both my girlfriend
and I were excited and nervous about our first film festival experience and eagerly
joined the long line outside the theatre. Night
Moves is a drama with a political edge. Directed by Kelly Reichardt (Meek’s Cutoff) It stars Jesse Eisenberg,
Dakota Fanning and Peter Sarsgaard as environmentalists who plan to blow up a
dam in rural Oregon.
The film initially reminded me of The
East, thematically at least but it soon becomes apparent that this is a
significantly smarter film which takes a different direction. It doesn’t
bombard the audience with back story or justification for the crimes. It
assumes that the audience is clever enough to understand their motivation. The
central characters also remain half hidden and you’re never sure if they’re
showing their real selves to each other or the audience. The planning and
preparation are interesting and the execution of the dam’s destruction is
incredibly tense. What follows soon after is rather predictable but the
character’s transformations surprise.